Doing It Wrong: High Availability and Security

Last weekend while walking around Manhattan I passed by a bank. I noticed that all of the desks had monitors that were visible to the street. Since it was at night, and no one was working, all of the screens were black.

All but one.

And that’s the one that caught my eye.

IMG_5213_rz

Can you read the card? If not, let me help you a bit:

IMG_5213_cp

Yeah, that’s right. It’s a note, presumably to a cleaning crew, telling them to not touch the surge protector under the desk. I’m guessing that at one point in history someone DID touch that surge protector and it caused issues. The fix for that?

Put a note on the screen. #thereifixedit

How many things can you find wrong with this scenario? Here’s my short list:

  • Screen monitors facing the street
  • Floor to ceiling windows, allowing pedestrians to easily see the screens
  • Relying on someone to read this note before doing anything else (and hoping they understand English)

For some Friday fun, tell me how many other issues you see here. Even my kids got a laugh out of this “fix” to ensure high availability, and they are 9 and 10 years old.

I wonder what the average age is for the folks that work at that bank…

11 thoughts on “Doing It Wrong: High Availability and Security”

  1. Relying on a cheap surge protector and desktop PC for something very important to function or be stored on. Maybe a UPS may help a little 🙂

    Nice wood desk by the way!

    Reply
  2. It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses, especially in downtown areas, have huge street level windows that look into offices and cubicles with memos, notes, computer screens and such clearly visible to anyone walking past. The opportunity to gather enough intel for a social engineering attack is wide open putting employees and clients are risk. As in many things in life, high availability is only as effective as the weakest link.

    Reply
  3. Clearly these people are amateurs. That note should include the username and password to login to the computer. Just in case…

    Reply
  4. Some guy at a company I used to work for had a sign, again presumably for cleaners. This sign said “Do not use these plug sockets”.

    It took all my constraint not to unplug the cables plugged in and print an extra sign saying “Fixed”.

    Reply

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